Chapter Text
For once in his life, Daxter was dumbstruck. He'd always kept up his bragging and bravado like a neon light, pointing to him and screaming "I'm here! I'm a person! Just notice me! Remember me!" Though it did tend to have the opposite effect sometimes. When Sig entered them into the training squad as individuals rather than a unit, Daxter hadn't gotten his hopes up that anyone outside of Jak would see him as anything but an annoying animal sidekick. But they had.
Daxter was used to people ignoring him in favor of Jak, or treating him as an extension of Jak. And he told himself he didn't mind, because they didn't really see Jak for who he was, either. Nobody had ever "raised" him to be anything. Well, his parents might have, but they'd been dead so long that the most Daxter could remember about them was what they looked like when they smiled. But now, Kleiver was the only one he regularly interacted with who still treated him like an animal. Now sometimes their squad voluntarily hung out with him, even if Jak wasn't there!
Daxter had almost forgotten what it was like to be treated like a kid.
"I uh-" Daxter fidgeted, and then turned away quickly, feigning annoyance. "Y- you just had to go and get sappy!"
Jak's stoic mask slipped, and he bit his lip. Those words probably did more to heal the pair of them than light eco even could. Jak mouthed a heartfelt thank-you to the king before checking on his friend.
"Dax?" he asked.
"Don't look at me!" Dax sniffled, managing to sound offended while hastily drying his eyes on his arm.
Damas let go of Jak's arm to lay a hand on Daxter's back. Whatever storm had been brewing inside him looked as if it had passed, and that bizarre, gentler side didn't seem to be going away.
"Go wash your face," he said, which conveniently gave the ottsel an excuse to hide any evidence that he'd cried, "Your fur is a wreck."
Daxter coughed and snickered despite himself. "A wreck?! My dashing charms supercede wetness!"
"You look like Hurricane Hairball, buddy," Jak interjected.
The ottsel gasped in outrage. "How very dare you!" He pointed at Jak. "You ain't no basket of fruit yourself, bigfoot!"
There was a very small smile on Damas's face as he watched the pair bicker. He still looked drawn and weary, but something about him had settled. Not quite contentment, but near enough to it. And if part of it was feigned, well, the rookies didn’t need to know that.
His pulse still hammered in his ears, and his gut twisted in knots. He was heartsick, but hopeful. Fearing the truth but needing it desperately. But even with this foreboding hovering over his mind, he could pretend all was as it should be until the storm had passed, could he not?
He cleared his throat, catching the boys' attention. "You both need to wash up," he said. "I don't know what goes on in your brains, running around the desert as you do with your hair loose. And dashing out into a squall like this bareheaded, no less! It only makes more work for you later."
Damas had a sudden, sinking suspicion that was swiftly confirmed by the confused looks passing between his- the boys.
"You don't...know how to do anything with your hair, do you?"
Embarrassed, Jak squeezed his amulet. "No, no, I know stuff! I just...can't make it look right."
"Because I can't braid for crap!" Daxter announced unapologetically.
Muscling down the bittersweet pang in his chest -- it's too soon, too soon to get your hopes up. Take the moments as they come but do not read too much into what may only be coincidence -- Damas shook his head and sighed. He took hold of Jak's collar with one hand, and picked up Daxter by the scruff of the neck with the other. They were Spargans now, they might as well start looking like proper citizens.
Ignoring their sputtered protests, Damas marched them down the stairs to the pools of water. "Wash your hair," he said firmly, depositing them unceremoniously in the nearest pool. "I'll be back."
"Hey!" Jak spluttered and scrambled back out of the water. "Are you crazy?!"
Damas merely gave him a look , and stepped out of the chamber.
Daxter cackled and splashed him. "I wasn't gonna say anything pal, but you're
ripe."
He made a show of pinching his nose between two fingers and fanning the air in front of him. “Phew! You smell like the ghost of Krewe!”
"Okay, that's it-!"
Jak yanked off his headgear, boots, and tunic, then jumped back into the pool to chase down Daxter.
Daxter, sensing the imminent danger, shrieked and all but slithered into the next pool. "No! I'm too young to die!"
"Whatssamatter, Dax?" Jak taunted as he waded in deeper, "Scared of a little water?"
"Scared of your B.O., more like!"
"Oh you're so dead."
Damas returned to a little more chaos than he'd initially anticipated. Torn between appreciating a distraction from his thoughts and dismay at the mess, he wordlessly set down the box he'd been carrying and observed the pair.
Jak had held the upper hand for a while by way of size and strength, but Daxter was slippery when wet, and had gotten the drop on Jak.
"SAY GOODNIGHT, JAK!" Daxter whooped, and promptly shoved his friend's head under the water.
Jak, in turn, flailed like the colossal squid that guarded their cove until he'd managed to grab Daxter's arm. He flipped into a death-roll, plunging Daxter back into the pool, and popped up with a triumphant laugh.
Damas almost didn't want to disturb them. It was rare enough to see the pair actually behaving like other Spargans their age. They'd had to grow up much too quickly, just as Damas had.
Still, they were making a mess.
"I believe the point was to remove the sand from your bodies, not remove the water from the pools," he remarked.
Neither of them looked particularly sorry. Jak shook water from his face and waded to the edge of the pool.
"What's the box for?" he asked.
With a raised eyebrow, Damas withdrew a small bottle and an ornate comb from the rough iron box and sat down on one of the larger stones. He tilted his chin towards the rock below it in a gesture that clearly meant sit down.
Jak eyed the comb incredulously. "Wait, are you serious? You’re going to do my hair?"
Damas lifted a hand toward the windows, where the rain slammed against the glass as the storm moved inland. "I don't see why not. Nobody is going anywhere until the storm passes, so you may as well wait it out here. And while you’re here, you might as well learn a few life skills that don’t involve shooting moving targets or climbing recklessly on the nearest dangerous object."
Clearly, Damas wasn't going to let him get out of doing some hair maintenance. Jak begrudgingly took a seat in front of the king.
"Is this gonna take long?"
Damas raised the comb and eyed Jak's scalp critically. "No more than two or three hours, I should think, provided you sit still. You’ll want to get comfortable now."
Daxter swam closer with mischief sparkling in his eyes. "Iii’m free-ee and you-uu're stu-uck!" he chanted in a sing-song voice.
Without looking up, Damas pointed the comb at the ottsel. "You're next."
"Eep!" Daxter submerged quickly, as though that would save him.
Jak craned his neck to try to identify the contents of the bottle, but just as quickly, Damas turned his head back to face the lift.
“Oh come on! What’s in the flask?”
“Oil.” Damas poured a fragrant liquid out onto his hands and rubbed them together before taking hold of Jak’s hair. He sighed in a distinctly un-kingly fashion. “I can’t tell if your antics damaged this hair more, or whatever excuse for conditioning you used in Haven city.”
Daxter resurfaced and shuddered. “Haven soap? Brrrr. It got the sewer stink off ya, but lemme tell you about the split ends-!”
“We pretty much just stole bar soap from Krewe's bathrooms at the saloon,” Jak admitted. “The Underground doesn’t have much of a budget.”
Damas clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. What did they do with your, er, your younger self’s hair?”
“Chopped it short and shoved it under a cap, mostly, to keep anyone from recognizing him.” Jak tried to shrug, and received a light tug on his hair in return, warning him to sit still. “Samos mostly just used plant extracts to straighten it after we moved to Sandover, since I was always getting it tangled.”
“Keep in mind, that guy literally has a bird’s nest in his hair,” Daxter piped up, “So Hair Day involved a lot of shrugging and him quitting halfway through.”
Jak attempted to subtly roll his shoulders to work out a small muscle cramp, but other than that, he was surprised that this bizarre moment wasn’t more uncomfortable. He’d thought that having someone who wasn’t Daxter touch his hair would have had him on the defensive. It was such a vulnerable position to be in, sitting unarmed while someone’s hands were dangerously close to delicate vertebrae and arteries. At the very least, he’d expected the knots and scalp-pulling he and Daxter went through every time they combed it out.
But Damas certainly seemed to know what he was doing, and he didn’t seem to mind taking the time to fix one of his subjects’ bad hair. It actually felt… nice , having the oil worked through his curls. Without realizing it, Jak began to relax, a little at a time.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
“Does the oil actually help?” he asked after a few moments of silence.
He heard Damas sigh again.
“Ye gods and little fishes,” Damas muttered, “Was he raised by wolves? That sage is an idiot.”
“A man after my own heart,” Daxter joked as he hauled himself out of the water to warm up on the stones. “Jak, we’re keeping him, right?”
Damas swept a large portion of Jak’s hair to the side and tapped it against his scalp. “Hold that down for me.”
As Jak complied, he added more oil to the part left behind and began working the comb through it. “A cream would have been better for some of these tangles, but the oil will suffice to soften and moisturize your hair. As it stands now, many of these strands are damaged or broken. At the very least, the coconut oil will keep out bacteria and prevent worse damage.”
Jak made a face. “What does that even mean? There's bacteria? People put cream on their hair?! This is…not the kind of discussion I was expecting to have in Spargus, no offense.”
“Bah.” Damas nudged Jak’s head back into place. “Because it sounds “soft” to discuss the details of your hair, is that it? Or is it because you were not taught to care for yourself? Put that out of your mind. A good warrior knows to maintain their body as they would their best rifle.” With a gentle tug, he added, “Your hair is part of that body.”
Jak felt an unpleasant emotion squirm around in his stomach. When was the last time an adult had told him to put any kind of work into taking care of himself? He was the guy that was always supposed to make the big sacrifices for everybody else, or he was the hired gun who was supposed to go in and do the dirty work so nobody else had to. Why put the effort in when the next mission was just going to wreck it all again?
Come to think of it, when was the last time someone had told him to be careful, or not to get injured on a mission? It had been Damas or Sig, hadn’t it?
Had anyone in Haven ever expressed worry for his personal health? Jak found that he couldn’t remember anymore.
“So…is your hair like mine? Is that why you know how to do this?” Jak asked. He needed to steer his mind away from thinking about Haven, or he’d tilt towards another spiral.
“Mm.” Damas separated out the hair again and moved Jak’s hand to pin down another section. “It’s a very common hair type. I’m surprised no one ever taught you how to take care of it.”
His tone was carefully neutral. Don’t dive too deep. If you’re wrong, it’ll just hurt more. “Who cut your hair as a child?”
“Uh…” Jak closed his eyes and resigned himself to remembering Haven again. “Torn, I think. He’s the ex-KG guy I mentioned. Actually-” Jak opened his eyes. “He wears his hair kinda like you, too! So I guess he just didn’t want to be bothered with my kid self’s hair. He ah, he doesn’t like me all that much.”
He winced as the comb dragged across his scalp, sectioning his hair into yet another division.
“What are you doing?”
He could feel hair being tugged this way and that behind his left ear, but couldn’t quite catch anything in his peripheral vision.
“Hey Daxter, what’s he doing?”
“Your hair, by the look of it,” Daxter teased.
"Dax, c'mon."
Daxter relented. “Some kinda fancy twirly thing.”
“Two-strand twist,” Damas corrected. “It should protect your hair from some of the heat out here, as long as you don’t mess with it.”
“Oh.” Jak settled and leaned back a little. His back brushed against Damas's shins, and he made a face. “That’s cool, I guess.”
For a time, they lapsed into silence and let the sounds of the storm fill up the spaces between them. Metal creaked and popped sullenly against stone as the wind shook and shoved the palace. Lights flickered within, but the tower had been built to last. The wind howled all the louder, like a predator robbed of its prey, and beat against the windows.
"We used to call these Dragon Squalls when I was a boy," Damas murmured after a particularly loud crack of thunder.
Jak's eyes fluttered open. Though he would never admit it, he had begun to fall asleep. He straightened his spine and pretended he hadn't just been using Damas's knee for an arm rest.
Damas could've warned him that he was dozing off!
"Why'd you call it that?" He yawned. "We just called 'em hurricanes when I was little."
"You don't know the story of the Precursor and the Sea Dragon?" Damas asked.
He didn't sound surprised. But if Jak hadn't known better, he'd have almost thought there was a hint of sadness in his voice.
"Never heard it."
"Do you wish to hear it?"
The ruthlessly efficient king of the desert was casually offering to tell him a story while doing his hair, like he was a little kid. Jak started to wonder if maybe he'd hit his head during the morning spar harder than he'd thought. Damas was friendly with most of his subjects, and even warm towards young recruits, but not like this. This was -- and always had been -- something different. Something Jak didn't have a name for, but had seen between Keira and Samos when he was a child.
He hadn't wanted to acknowledge it when Damas had first taken them under his wing. He'd never really belonged anywhere -- or with anyone -- before. Acknowledging in his mind that Damas cared about him felt too much like jinxing something a little too good to be true.
And yet here they were, even after how strangely Damas had acted that morning.
"Whatcha think, Dax?" Jak called across the throne room.
Daxter had wandered off while Jak had been dozing, and now perched on the arm of Damas's throne, watching the storm.
"Sure is blowing out there," he observed, slightly subdued, "Hey, you think the leapers are gonna be okay?"
"It is not their first squall, Daxter." Damas sounded faintly amused. "They will fare better than we would in their place."
"Huh." Daxter kicked his feet idly and squinted out at the rain as if he could actually see the stables. "Well, they better, because I ain't going out there to save 'em! Smelly lizards."
Despite their rather poor first impression, the gangly creatures were starting to grow on Daxter, no matter how strenuously he denied it.
Damas finished twisting two strands of hair together and leaned back to check his work. The back of Jak's head was now neatly divided into rows of green-gold twists. The sun bleached gold didn't extend all the way to the roots -- those were still the same vibrant green they'd been when-
Oh Damas, you old fool. You're already accepting it? Let Jak be Jak. Don't put this on him without proof.
With a hard blink to dispel unwelcome moisture, Damas cleared his throat and pushed at Jak's shoulders. "Turn that way."
Jak yawned again and shifted to the left so that Damas could start on his left temple. "So what's with the sea dragon?"
It was a story most children in Haven heard at least once in their lives. If not from a parent, then at school. Book reports, cartoons, even school plays often focused on or alluded to the old folktale in some way. That Jak had never heard of it was just one more piece of evidence that his story was true. Morosely, Damas found himself wondering if anyone had told the boys stories as they grew up.
Damas poured more coconut oil into his hands, and began to tell the tale from memory -- abbreviating as he went out of habit. Mar never sat still long enough to hear the whole-
Ah.
Was this acceptance, then? Or a painful delusion, projected onto a boy who deserved to be seen as his own person? Damas bit his tongue and forced himself to keep speaking.
"Long ago, humans and Precursors lived together in harmony. From their shining fortresses, the Precursors watched over humanity, and taught them the use of machines. In turn, the humans honored and revered them, and vowed to safeguard the planet's supply of eco. They became the very first sages.
One day, a terrible storm swept across the land, destroying villages and forests. The Precursors sent their Oracle to investigate, and found mysterious footprints wherever the ruin was worst. So the Oracle went to the humans who had survived by hiding in a cave, and asked,
"What is this thing that has happened to the land? Who is responsible for this destruction?"
"Oh great Oracle," the people replied, "A terrible dragon has come up out of the sea! His wings are the foam of the waves, his claws are the teeth of Lurker Sharks, and he can change himself into a mighty storm with a magic word!"
"Where has this dragon gone?" asked the Oracle, but no one could tell her with any certainty."
At this, Daxter snorted and hopped down from the throne. "Oh yeah. 'Well he's either a giant dragon or a giant storm, but we don't know where he is because we never learned how to look up!' Jak, I think these guys are related to ol' Meathead the Warrior back in Rock Village."
Jak snickered. "Sounds about right."
Damas glared at Daxter, but with no real heat behind it. "Are you telling this story, or am I?"
Daxter shot an insolent grin at him and slid back into the water. "What's a story without a little commentary?"
"Uninterrupted," Damas retorted.
Daxter found this more amusing than he did.
He finished the left temple and stretched his fingers, then moved on to the crown of Jak's head.
"I see that if I'm to make it to the end of this tale, I'll have to shorten it a bit."
Jak listened contently as he sat. Damas had a good voice for storytelling: low and warm and even. Between the sounds of the storm, the rhythmic tugging of the braids against his scalp, and the dim flickering of the torches, Jak had already been hard-pressed not to drift off before the story began. Now his eyelids drooped as Damas spoke of the Oracle arguing with the Precursor elders about the best way to handle the dragon. Before he could even register that time had passed at all, the story seemed to have leaped forward. Now the Oracle seemed to be in battle with the storm dragon.
"The battle raged until each was exhausted. The dragon bared his teeth and lay down upon the sand. "You fight well, Precursor. But you have forgotten that I am the storm, and you shall die here." And so saying, his body became a mass of clouds and rain. Wind ripped the trees from the earth, and the sea surged up and filled the beach, to the very hilltops."
"Yeesh. Hope Precursors can swim," Daxter mumbled from somewhere near Jak.
Jak looked down at his friend with a fuzzy sort of confusion. When had Daxter come out of the water? His fur was still damp, it couldn't have been long ago.
Damas shifted his weight on the rock above Jak and dropped a hand over his skull. "You're almost done. Turn around."
Jak grumbled under his breath and inched his way around to face the king -- or his torso, at least. When he tilted his head back, Damas looked more relaxed than he'd ever seen. The king raised his brows and smirked.
"You look tired."
"M'not," Jak grumbled. "You c'n keep going."
"Hm." Damas's eyes crinkled at the corners. "As you wish."
He could guess that Jak would doze off again, but there was no harm in it. Heaven knew he’d fallen asleep while having his hair done a time or two when he was growing up. And admittedly, it had been an… eventful day.
“As the waters rose, the dragon laughed, for he believed the Oracle to have been blown away or drowned. But the Oracle gathered eco from the trees, and the rocks, and the water itself, and she transformed herself into an ottsel.”
Jak blinked. “An ottsel?”
Damas cast a knowing smile at Daxter, who was now listening more intently than before. “Aye. As orange as the metal of the Precursor cities. She swam through the waves, into the very heart of the storm. The dragon had not expected the Oracle to change into such a small creature, and his heart was exposed before the Precursor. Though her paws were small, and her teeth were blunt, the Oracle tore at the dragon’s heart. With every slash, the storm grew weaker, and the water began to recede.”
“What a woman!” Daxter whistled. “Now if she could just be Tess-!”
“Sap.” Jak lifted a lazy hand to poke the ottsel in the side.
“Barbarian.” Daxter poked him back.
Before they could rile each other up further, Damas cleared his throat. “Don’t move, Jak.”
Jak snorted. “Sorry.”
He wasn’t.
“The story usually ends with the defeat of the dragon,” Damas said as he began to twist the next few strands of hair. It was amusing to watch Jak going cross-eyed in his attempts to watch the twisting. “Some people tell it with the place of the dragon’s defeat becoming the ancient Precursor Basin. Sometimes there’s a side note saying that the Precursors honored the Oracle by giving all ottsels orange coats, but there’s no empirical evidence that ancient ottsels were any color other than orange.”
Daxter’s face twisted in an odd expression. “ Empirical evidence? What am I, extinct?”
“To date, you’re the only ottsel I’ve ever seen outside of a few sketches in the corner of a three-hundred-year-old traveler’s diary,” Damas answered. “That’s probably why so many people assume you’re some kind of rat.”
Daxter crossed his arms and pouted. “Well that sucks. I probably was the guy in the drawing, too, if it’s that old!”
At last, Damas pulled back and clapped Jak on the shoulders.
“You’re done. Get up, I need to stretch.”
After sitting for so long, there were pins and needles in Jak’s feet, and his knees protested slightly when he stood. After trying to work out the kinks in his spine, Jak bent over the water to try to get a look at his hair. He couldn’t see much more than a shadow on the water, but the silhouette looked interesting. The twists hung around his face, and when he shook his head, they swirled outward for half a second before gravity caught up. A mischievous grin crept over Jak’s face, and he shook his head again, faster this time. The braids whipped into his face, and he laughed.
“Oh, this feels weird.” He ran a finger down one of the thicker twists, appreciating the shape. “I didn’t think my hair was this long!”
Damas stretched and rolled his shoulders. He stepped from rock to rock, pacing a little to get the circulation moving in his legs again. “Just imagine what they would’ve looked like if we hadn’t cut your hair when we found you,” he smirked.
Jak tried to picture this, and then shook his head again. “I don’t know anybody with hair that long.”
After a moment, he rather gruffly added, “Uh, thanks. For the braids, I mean. You didn’t have to.”
“ Somebody had to,” the king teased, “But you are welcome to come to me if you need help with this again.”
“I…probably will need help,” Jak admitted. “I didn’t see what you did, exactly. Can it just stay like this for a while? Or like...how long before I have to take it out?”
He’d never really seen Damas with his hair loose, or even Torn when he stopped to think about it. Their hairstyles weren’t quite the same as Jak’s, but he still wondered if they took the same amount of time to put together, and if they ever unbraided them. There was so much he’d never been taught about taking care of himself -- he and Daxter had more or less raised themselves with minimal supervision, after all -- and in hindsight it wasn’t that surprising that he’d been handling his hair incorrectly. It wasn’t like self-care had really been high on his list of priorities for the last couple of years.
“They should last for a good couple weeks, if you take care of them,” Damas offered. He raised an eyebrow sternly. “And yes , that means washing it every few weeks.”
“He still has to bathe regularly, right?” Daxter piped up, “Because if I gotta share a room with him when he’s only bathing once every couple of weeks, I’m moving out.”
“Hey!” Jak looked offended. “I do bathe! Just not during missions!”
“Convenient how often we’re on missions, huh?” Daxter hopped up onto a rock, fully prepared to pick on his best friend a little more, when he was abruptly lifted into the air.
“Your turn.” Damas unceremoniously plopped the ottsel down next to him. “I am not certain if one can actually braid fur , but we’ll find out shortly.”
Jak pulled a childish face at Daxter, who looked vaguely like a man going to his execution. He hopped down from his rock and headed back towards the stairs, tossing a half yawned “good luck” at Daxter before settling into a more comfortable position to wait out the rest of the storm. He vaguely remembered hearing Daxter complaining and Damas arguing back before the storm lulled him back into sleep once more.